A bittersweet bite of the Big Apple

Last time I saw my good friend Edmund Silvestre, who is this corner’s special New York correspondent, he was between a half smile and a half frown, so different from my meeting with him on my previous visits to the Big Apple when he was full of life and laughter with so many happy stories to tell, fully recharged even if he had just put to bed the weekly paper where he worked (take note: past tense) as news editor/entertainment editor, the same paper from which another friend, Raoul Tidalgo, has retired and is currently shuttling between siblings in San Antonio, Texas and Tagbilaran City.

That was in early October when I was in New York for the The Last Witch Hunter junket, the “un-Fast & Furious” starrer of Vin Diesel who, in case you didn’t know, gleefully did the Pabebe Wave to cap our 10-minute TV interview for the GMA show CelebriTV. The big guy genuinely loves the Philippines (which he visited two years ago for the Fast & Furious promo) because the wife of his twin brother is a Filipina.

Edmund picked me up at the Le Parker Meridien Hotel in Manhattan where the journalists covering the junket were booked. We walked in the light autumn rain to the nearest subway station and got off between 1st and 2nd Avenues to fetch Gloria Cabrera at her salon and spa which has been for years the favorite haunt of not just Pinoys but foreigners as well to have themselves “beautified” by the expert hands of Gloria who is sought-after even by Philippine socialites visiting New York. (Edmund wrote about her for Funfare a few years back.)

“She’s the Vicki Belo of New York as far as Filipinos are concerned,” said Edmund, a long-time friend of Gloria’s. “She specializes in hair/make-up, facial-body treatments, wart removal, permanent eyebrows, whatever.”

We walked to a nearby Mexican restaurant. Edmund and Gloria ordered lobster each and I, chicken (ala Mexicana yata, hehehe!). I didn’t ask Edmund “what happened” but even if I did, he wouldn’t tell anyway. Of course, while in Manila I learned from friends that he was in a legal battle with his former employer. It was painful for Edmund, a bittersweet bite of the Big Apple I should say, because he gave the best years of his life to that job. Out of it, he tried to survive by working daytime at a big department store and studied at night to be a medical assistant and phlebotomist. (Trivia: At the Mexican restaurant, we saw the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe tattooed on the arm of a waiter.)

The sad part was that, since Edmund was no longer connected with the media, so-called “friends” were suddenly afflicted with amnesia (“Hindi na ako kilala,” Edmund rued). Good riddance to those fair-weather “friends.”

“Now you know who your real friends are,” I tried to console Edmund. “So what’s new? Those publicity hounds…grrrrr!!!!”

I left the Big Apple with my heart aching for Edmund, reminding him that from the bottom, the depths of despair, there was nowhere to go but up, the heights of, well, happiness. (Postscript: A few days ago, somebody told me that there was “an amicable” settlement. I hesitate to ask Edmund if he’s “happy” with it.)

During that very brief New York visit, I finally met Manny dela Rosa, the official US correspondent of The Filipino Channel (TFC), who was there for the Witch Hunter junket and also billeted at Le Parker; and reunited with Yong Chavez, the official US TV correspondent of ABS-CBN, who flew in from L.A. (where she’s based with her family) likewise for the junket. It was my second meeting with Yong whom I saw during the Insurgent junket in L.A. last March.

On my third and last day, I got a more delicious bite of the Big Apple during a quick lunch in Chinatown with old friends Boy Echavez (the New Yorker from Bohol, hehehe!), and nurse Betty Veloso-Garcia (also from Bohol) and her husband Babes Garcia. Among the topics over servings of dimsum was the restoration of Bohol after that devastating earthquake two years ago and the resilience of the Boholanos. Maybe the damaged Chocolate Hills would grow back to the original perfect shapes?

“For sure,” they agreed.

On the way home, I made an overnight stopover in L.A. and hooked up with more old friends, celebrity immigration lawyer Jemela Nettles and Tim Evans (of the US Immigration), with my nephew Raymond Lo, the STAR L.A. correspondent who covers Hollywood. (We would meet again only three weeks later when I covered Madonna’s Rebel Heart concert in L.A.) Same old stories over dinner that sounded new with each repetition. What’s new was that I was able to make them do the Pabebe Wave just like I did with Vin Diesel.

There you are, job done. I promised myself I wouldn’t let 2015 slip into oblivion without telling those “biting” stories.

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